


Like a Man

by hubblegleeflower



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, BAMF John, Bottom John, Bottom Sherlock, Closeted John, Established Relationship, Homophobia, Homophobia around anal sex and bottoming, I know 'who puts what where' is an important question for some people, M/M, Sherlock tops in this actual story, Sort Of, Switching, Top John, Top Sherlock, but he's trying to get past it, but usually it's John, it is to John as well, not sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 11:18:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11988714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblegleeflower/pseuds/hubblegleeflower
Summary: After an unpleasant encounter in a pub, John decides to try to be the man Sherlock already thinks he is. Sherlock shows him who hereallyis.





	Like a Man

**Author's Note:**

> You know, and I know, that the relative positions two men choose to take during their sexual relations tell us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about their masculinity, and further that there are as many different sexual dynamics as there are couples, or even couplings, and finally that a couple could go their entire relationship without having any kind of penetrative sex, in any direction, and it would mean NOTHING WHATSOEVER.
> 
> This isn't a story about what _we_ know.

“Do it, Sherlock. I want it. I’m yours, okay? It’s yours. Have it. Fucking have it. I want— _fuck_ , Sherlock. I mean it. Now.”

John drags Sherlock bodily up the stairs, past the sitting room door and up to the next landing. John’s room. John’s _old_ room. Little used now but that’s where he takes them, instead of the larger, more accustomed room off the kitchen. He heads straight for it. No pause, no hesitation. No asking.

John has Sherlock by the lapels of his coat, his hands curled into fists. He hauls on him, pulling him along, for all that Sherlock follows him quite willingly. John is alight with rage and indignation, and Sherlock would follow a John like this wherever he might lead. He is _irresistible_. 

Once up the stairs, John strips off Sherlock’s coat and his own jacket and wrenches his shoes off his feet. He steps close to Sherlock, glaring, piercing. He grasps both of Sherlock’s hands and places them firmly, roughly, on his arse. There is a fierce kiss. John is _burning_.

“John, I—it’s all right, you don’t have to…”

“It’s not, it’s not all right. Why should we—the fucking nerve. Of course I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you anything you want.”

***

They’ve been out tonight, not even on a case, with a mate of John’s from the army and some other men he doesn’t know. One of them turned out to be an ugly drunk, and there has been ugly talk, about poofters and nancies and taking it up the arse, and how it was one thing to bugger some fairy who was gagging for it, but quite another for a real man to offer to take another man’s cock.

“You lot are fucking soldiers,” the man said. “You know what I mean. It’s just not something you do if you’re a man.”

John was not out to these people and no one was speaking up (although no one looked particularly happy with this line of discourse either) so Sherlock just sat, and listened, and thought he might understand a little better why John has been so hesitant to bottom during sex. If this was the sort of talk he found unremarkable. 

John caught Sherlock’s eye just as Sherlock was wondering what John must think of Sherlock, who has always offered himself so freely, and that was when John rose abruptly. 

He placed both his hands flat on the table, and smiled at the man, whose words stuttered to a halt. John said, “You are a complete and utter tosser, and you’re talking shite, and it’s fucking offensive.” 

“But come on,” the man—whose survival instinct was clearly underdeveloped—almost whined. “You’re a fucking _soldier._ You know what it means to be a man.”

“Yeah, I do.” John sniffed, still smiling. “And it has fuck all to do with my arse, which I know, because I’m a fucking soldier.” Sherlock was already shrugging into his coat by this time, and wasn’t expecting John’s parting words: “I’m done. I’m taking my boyfriend home. If I’m lucky he’ll fuck me.” With that, John calmly knocked back the last of his drink, nodded coldly to the other men at the table, and guided Sherlock towards the door. He did not look back. He did not hurry.

***

Now, though, John does hurry. His shoes are off and his jacket is off and he is pulling his shirt, only half unbuttoned, over his head. He gives Sherlock another hard kiss while unbuckling his belt. He hitches his jeans off his hips and lets the weight of the belt pull the trousers to the floor, and kicks them off with his feet. He doesn’t break eye contact the whole time.

Sherlock is hard and straining in his trousers. He hasn’t seen this incandescent John in quite some time. Not since they’ve been together. There has always been a hard edge to John, since the beginning, but it has blurred, has softened since the first night they kissed. He is glad of that, of course he is. Nevertheless, this blistering, searing John is _exhilarating._

_And wrong._ Sherlock can almost ignore the wrongness, though, because John like this is also _so beautiful._

He is naked now, John is, naked and hard and defiant. Chest high, chin out, cock curving up against his belly. He doesn’t stop, but scrambles across the bed to pull a half-empty bottle of lube from the drawer of the bedside table, which he _yanks_ open and _slams_ shut. 

He crawls back to where Sherlock is standing fully dressed by the door, grabs his hand and slaps the bottle firmly into his palm, closing Sherlock's fingers around it. _Masterful_. (And wrong.)

He speaks. It is a growl. “Have me, Sherlock. _Do it._ All of that, all that fucking garbage he was spouting, it’s shit, it’s _shit._ ” John’s mouth twists, his face contorts. He is _furious._

“I know it is.” The fine balance between _enthralling_ and _worrying_ teeters, shifts.

“It’s not—I don’t—” John is sputtering now, choking on his own rage.

“I know you don’t.” 

_“Jesus._ It’s such fucking garbage.” John’s breath hitches, not quite a sob but close. He is glaring, looking downwards now, not meeting Sherlock’s eye. _Wrong._

“John.” Sherlock places one hand on John’s shoulder, dips his head, seeking eye contact. But John closes his eyes, looks away. The glimmer on his lashes might just be the lamplight. “It’s all right.”

“I saw your face, Sherlock. He was talking shit, about us, about _you,_ and I wasn’t stopping him. How the hell is that all right?”

“You did stop him.” 

John continues as if he hasn’t heard. “I saw your face. You were wondering if that was how I think, if that’s what I think of _you._ ”

“No,” Sherlock lies.

“Liar,” John shoots back. His emotional moment has passed and he’s all fury and righteousness again, gripping Sherlock’s wrists and dragging him towards the bed. “You were wondering if I don’t think you’re a proper man because I fuck you, because you take my cock up your arse and you love it, and you’re worried that makes me think you’re less of a man.” His legs hit the bed and he clambers onto it without looking, kneeling up, still not releasing his hold on Sherlock’s arms. “And that’s bullshit, Sherlock, it’s bullshit. You are a _man_ , the best goddamn man I know. You are, all the time, no matter what you’re doing. When you take my cock you are a _man_ , understand? And I want you to fuck me, I want you to fuck me _like a man_.” John releases Sherlock’s hands and turns away, falls upon his elbows and thrusts his hips back and up towards Sherlock, whose eyes narrow. John, face in the mattress, doesn’t see. He finishes: “And I am going to _take it._ I am going to take it _like a man.”_

Without transition Sherlock is angry. It is sudden and unexpected and consuming. That John should make this offer out of rage, through clenched teeth, in response to nonsense uttered by some idiot in the pub, some idiot who _doesn’t matter at all,_ and think Sherlock will accept it...but sentiment has always made John blind, fury above all. 

Clamping down on his rage he steps in close and grab two fistsful of John’s arse, and hears John gasp. He digs in with the fingers of both hands. “That’s how you want it, is it? You stick your arse in the air and I’m going to fuck it, yes? I’m going to fuck this arse.” _Vulgar_. He can’t speak his rage in any other terms. “Good and hard.”

“ _Yes.”_ A shiver travels down John’s body, and little wonder, Sherlock never talks like this, but he is angry, aroused and angry, and his filters are gone. He loosens one hand to run a knuckle down the middle of John’s cleft, lets it drag over the ridges of his hole, up and down. Not quite hard enough to hurt, but not gentle. 

He speaks from his viscera. “ _Like a man_ , you said.” He drills the knuckle into the middle of the furled flesh, no lube, presses, presses, then drags again, up and down. John makes a small choked noise. 

“Like a man.” John’s voice is tense and gritty.

Sherlock’s hands go back to John’s hips and he brings his fully-clothed pelvis flush with John’s raised bottom, grinding his erection back and forth, buttock, cleft, buttock, _hard,_ scratching the raspy fabric of his trousers into John’s bare skin. “You want me to give it to you. There was an arsehole in the pub and you’re going to show him, show me, show everyone that John Watson knows what it means to be a man. You’re going to _take it._ ” Another hard thrust. “You’re going to take whatever I give you.”

“ _Do it.”_

“You want it.” Sherlock takes the rounds of John’s arse in his two hands and spreads them. Wide. He stretches and crooks his two thumbs, presses them into the skin on either side of John’s opening, using them to _pry_ John open, no lube, no prep. Again, on the razor-fine line between rough and painful. “You’re going to take it.”

“ _Yes.”_ In this mood, John _will_ take it. “Goddamn it, Sherlock.”

“Like a man.” John cannot hear his fury, or his bitterness. His fingers grip, digging into flesh. “Yes?” 

_“Yes.”_

“Good.” Sherlock removes his hands abruptly, steps back. Ignoring John’s startled intake of breath, he turns and walks to the door.

***

For a moment he thinks John won’t follow him. From the ragged sound of his breathing, Sherlock knows John’s face is pressed into the mattress. He doesn’t look around, but he can feel John’s seething frustration and, through it, his confusion. _His fear._ Yes, fear. Only the anger will show, of course; this is John. He'll come. 

Sure enough, after a few more seconds of shuddering, furious breathing, John pulls himself up off the bed and draws his shoulders straight and square. He moves to follow Sherlock and his step is firm, his head is up, and he makes no move to cover himself. If he did, his bobbing cock would be ridiculous. As it is, there is nothing but bristling pride in the whole strong line of his body, head to toe.

Sherlock does glance at him now—he can’t help it. John, naked and enraged, hard, thwarted, lost, but doggedly refusing to be vulnerable.

John is not the only one who can hide his reactions, however. Sherlock’s expression as he looks away is carefully neutral. He—fully clothed still—leads the way down the stairs. The thud of his shoes contrast on each step with the fall of John’s bare feet.

Sherlock is angry. For all that John is the one who carries his anger with him always, a daily burden, crouching in every corner disguised as irritation or indignation, placated or viciously kicked back, chained, but never quite absent—for all that John wears his anger like a brand, Sherlock can be angry too, and he is, now.

He measures his pace down the stairs and thinks, _how dare he_. His fingers wrap deliberately around the handle to the kitchen door, and he thinks, _how DARE he._ The outrage is simmering coldly under his sternum. Nothing shows on his face, but each step down the hall towards his own bedroom sends a jolt through his whole body, pounding in the rhythm of his outrage, _he dares, how dare he, he dares…_

He _dares_ to give such voice, such power, to such a contemptible specimen of humanity. He _dares_ to let _that thing_ see his masterfulness, his righteousness. _He dares_ to waste his cold and glorious rage on that, that _toad_ of a man, who thought he knew what a man was, and then _he dares_ to invite that very toad into their bedroom. _Their bedroom,_ and into the space between their bodies which has shown Sherlock that the sacred may exist after all. How _dare_ he.

John has been afraid to make this offer to Sherlock. It isn’t a _trust issue_ ; although Sherlock does not know human nature, he knows John Watson, and John’s reticence is not a lack of trust. Or rather, not a lack of trust _in Sherlock_. Not in Sherlock, but in his own voices. Sherlock can only guess at some of the voices John hears as he lays his hands lovingly on another man. John has undertaken—gladly, as Sherlock believes—to live with those voices for the sake of what he shares with Sherlock, but it can’t be easy to ignore them all the time. Sherlock has hoped for some time that their shared pleasure might one day drown them out, and then— _oh._ But he has never imbued specific sex acts with much importance and has been content to wait until John opened up of his own accord.

But now, like this? That John should open himself to Sherlock as a salvo, as attack and defense all at once _,_ in anger, not love—to _prove a point._..it is not to be borne.

It _will_ not be borne.

He carries his anger all the way down the hall, through the door which stands ajar, and around to the foot of the bed. He does not look towards the door when he hears John’s footsteps enter, nor when he hears the careful closing of the door—doorknob turned, door pushed to, doorknob slowly released. Under his hands, it does not make a sound.

Something in the slow deliberateness of that last action makes Sherlock turn. Whatever he was planning for John dissolves when he sees him standing by the door. 

John’s body is straight, military straight, his spine drawn up, everything tight and closed off and defiant…except his eyes. His eyes have gone peculiarly...deep. 

Sherlock has no words for how John’s eyes look. Lost, or oddly full. His fathomless eyes atop his rigid stance give him a look of resolve and infinite sadness that is wholly unbearable.

Sherlock cannot bear how much he loves John. 

He can hear the flatness of his own tone when he says, “Come here, John.” 

John obeys, stepping across the room and drawing himself up in front of Sherlock. He seems to stack his spine one vertebra at a time, and only when the last bone is placed does he raise his eyes to Sherlock’s. Sherlock, for his part, does not break eye contact the whole time it takes him to squeeze slick onto the fingers of his right hand and toss the bottle onto the bed. John watches.

“Turn around.”

John does, spine still stiff. When Sherlock lets his left hand settle onto his shoulder, John twitches. It is not quite a flinch, but it is close enough. The last of Sherlock’s anger dissolves into pure compassion. He rests his head beside his hand.

“I’m going to have you, John.” He runs his slick fingertips under the curve of John’s arse, all along where it joins the top of his thigh. He brings it up the line of John’s cleft, barely tickling the hidden hair that grows there. “I know you mean to go through with this.”

“Yeah.” There is steel John’s voice.

“Like a man.” His forehead still pressed into John’s shoulder blade, Sherlock’s glossy fingers sink a little deeper between John’s buttocks. “But John.” His fingers find John’s opening and flutter there, lightly. Skittering over the ridges there, swirling the slick. One finger, circling the opening, barely pressing. “John.”

“What.” Sherlock doesn’t need to see John’s face to know that his eyes are screwed shut. “ _What_ , Sherlock.”

The tip of Sherlock’s finger comes to rest right at the center of John’s hole. “I’m not a soldier, John. I’m not.” He presses, ever so slightly. “But I know what a man is.” 

“I know.” John's voice is harsh. “I know you do, just—” 

“Shh. Quiet now.” He traces the smallest circle with his fingertip, smearing, slipping. “Let me show you.”

***

Here is Sherlock, with his left hand gripping John’s shoulder, head pressed into John’s skin beside it, with his eyes squeezed closed, breathing in deep draughts of the warm-smelling skin of his back. Here is his other hand, upturned and reaching between John’s buttocks, circling, pressing ever so gently, then relenting. Circle, press, relent, as the whorled flesh smooths out under his touch. He puts his earlier rough treatment from his mind. This, _this_ is the way he wants to touch John. As if he could be anything but reverent the first time John allows this.

John is still tense under him, still trembling slightly with the strain of submitting himself to Sherlock, with the anger that drove him to demand this intimacy. Sherlock opens his mouth against the skin of John’s back, against the taut muscles, kisses. Kisses.

“Sherlock—” John goes rigid under Sherlock’s tender touch. “What are you doing?”

_He really doesn’t understand._ John, of the boundlessly gentle hands, of the touches, sweet, tentative, that care and _take care_ so that Sherlock is never hurt, is never afraid. John, who strokes and pets and soothes his lover. Like a man, always. Like an infinitely loving man. Who yet does not understand why Sherlock is not rough with his exposed body, is not using his power to hurt. What does John think a man is?

Sherlock doesn’t respond. What can he say? Instead he places another careful row of kisses up to the base of John’s neck. He slides his left hand off John’s shoulder, under his arm and across his chest. His splayed fingers reach to John’s other shoulder and he uses his grip to cradle John against his own chest. Supporting him.

(As much as John will allow right now, who is holding his shoulders tensely and supporting his own weight, bent forward, with the taut strength of his back.)

Sherlock’s right hand becomes more insistent now, the pads of three fingers slipping and circling over the furrows of skin at John’s opening. Tickling and twisting, swirling and slithering, letting the movement both soothe and sensitise. He keeps up his glides and wriggles until he feels John draw and release a deep, deep breath, and his shoulders relax. His body rests a little more heavily on Sherlock’s arm. 

_At last._

He doesn’t speak yet, doesn’t dare disturb the tentative ceasefire that John has granted, won’t comment on the infinitesimal lowering of his defenses. John is well guarded; it will not do to be unwary.

The skin he is working is warm and slippery now. Sherlock rolls his wrist and slides the back of his hand back and forth along the slicked flesh, feeling how smooth and open John’s anus has become, how lushly the bud of flesh has blossomed. He has not even breached him yet.

The backs of his knuckles brush John’s bollocks and rake lightly over his perineum as Sherlock drags his hand and wrist deeply through John’s cleft. He puts in some upward pressure on the next thrust and grins in secret triumph when John lowers his body ever so slightly to meet the push and to grind against his wrist. Without warning, he turns his hand over again and unerringly sinks his middle finger into John’s body to the first knuckle.

“ _Shit_ ,” John hisses. “Jesus, Sherlock.”

“Good?” Sherlock puts in the barest upward stretch. “You like that?”

John nods tightly but doesn’t speak. _Won’t_ speak, and won’t ask for more. Won’t tell Sherlock what he wants. When John tops Sherlock, he talks. Questions, teases, cajoles. Gentles and praises. But John now, for all his brash words, is not quite ready to admit this is happening, and doesn’t speak. Perhaps he can’t.

But Sherlock can. John has already come out this far to meet him, and Sherlock can speak. “John,” he whispers, in between planting kisses, sweet and full, on John’s shoulders and the back of his neck, “John, you are wonderful. Brave. This isn’t easy for you but I have to tell you, you’re so, you’re so—” here Sherlock deepens the thrust of his finger and revels in the faintest arch of John’s back in response. “You’re magnificent. Strong. I can see all the muscles in your back.” His hands are elsewhere so he runs his nose over the ripples between John’s shoulder blades, dragging his open mouth across the skin and emitting a low, hungry growl. “You’re strong, John. I sometimes forget how strong. But you can do anything. Anything.” He closes his teeth in a wide, slow bite designed to hurt, just a little, before he releases. “ _Listen,_ John. Anything, do you hear me? And of all things, you’re choosing to do this, you’re giving me this, so I won’t have to wonder what you think of me. So I’ll know.”

John leans back against the press of Sherlock’s finger, bearing down with gritted teeth. “Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah. So you’ll know...”

“But I do know, John.” Sherlock adds another finger, letting the opening stretch wider than must be quite comfortable for John. (John will want a penance.) “You’re trying to tell me you know I’m a man, a man who takes you up his arse, and you don’t believe anything you’ve been told about men who do that, even if you can’t help thinking about it all when you _fuck me_.” And here Sherlock does _fuck,_ for two short thrusts of his fingers, giving them a twist on the way in, for emphasis.

“ _Nnnng._ ” John groans under the rough treatment but meets the thrusts. “You’re a goddamn miracle. You know. You _know_. Christ, you know what I’m thinking. Christ, Sherlock, it’s true, it’s true, and I’m—”

“—and you’re sorry.” Gentle again, Sherlock twists his fingers as he talks. “You’re sorry for thinking it, aren’t you John?” Twists and curls.

“Fuck. _Yes_. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t want to be thinking it. You never wanted to think it.” 

“No. Fuck, no.” John can’t stay still; he holds the headboard as he’s been bidden, but he is moving and swaying his hips in counterpoint to Sherlock’s twists. His voice is strained. “Of course not. I love you. You’re my best— _ah—_ you’re the best man. Ever. Every...everything a good person should be. And if you give me your arse, and your—your trust... _Christ, Sherlock..._ If you do that for me, then that must be right, and they must be wrong, he must’ve been wrong, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so—”

“I know John.” Sherlock had John stretched now, rosy and wet and loose around his two fingers. “I’m sorry you have to have it in your head, but it’s not your fault. I love giving you my arse, and I love this, now, too, having yours, seeing you stretched around my fingers, taking me in. Taking it. Sweating and moaning and _taking it_ , like a man.”

Sherlock doesn’t know where all these words are coming from. He does not normally talk or heap praise on John during sex (or ever), but John does—perhaps to drown out the ugly words in his head—John heaps sweetness upon Sherlock as he fucks him, and John is a man, that’s what a man does, so it is right that John should kneel there and take Sherlock’s rushing stream of loving words.

Like a man.

Sherlock can see that John is ready. He eases his fingers out, earning a grunt of discomfort from John. He works quickly, unbuttoning his shirt and slipping it off his shoulders, glad of the cuffs already rolled to the elbows. His belt and trouser fastenings are dealt with just as fast, while he kicks off his shoes and socks. Within seconds, he is bare, and he returns with haste to John’s body, arm around his chest. Even after so brief an absence, it feels like homecoming.

He lines himself up and pushes all the way in. 

John shouts and groans, and presses back to take Sherlock deeper. Sherlock has to pause, to adjust to being buried in John. The wait must be harrowing, because when Sherlock pulls back and thrusts back in, John _howls_ , and lets himself drop onto Sherlock’s restraining arm as he rocks against Sherlock’s thrusts.

As Sherlock moves, the words keep coming. Words like “sweet” and “brave” and “strong” comes out of his mouth in whispers. And they are _true_ , they are _true,_ they are all exactly what Sherlock thinks of in relation to John, but he has never before been able to get the words out, and now, with John’s slick heat stretched tight around him, open and trusting, they flow like a river. 

“Beautiful,” he croons, and yes, he is crooning, he can claim that. It is _true_ , and John is so precious and, “ _Beautiful._ John, that’s it, I know you can feel me, does it, does it feel all right? You’re so, you’re so—look at you, you’ve gone so soft, you’ve let me in, I’m all the way in, oh god, John, I’m all the way inside you and you’re so, you’re so— _strong_ , John, brave and strong, to let me do this when you were afraid.”

“I wasn’t _af_ —”

“Oh, John, no, please, please don’t, I love this, I love you. You were, you were afraid, and you let me anyway. You were.”

“I—oh, god, that’s—okay.” And here John quiets under his hands, despite this frenzy. His voice, for the first time since they left the pub, is calm. “All right,” he says. “Yes. I was, I was afraid. Not of you...but.” A deep breath, and a pause.

“I know, John.” Following John’s lead, Sherlock lets his frantic tone go still. “That is, I think I know.”

John laughs softly, there, his forehead leaning on the headboard. “You probably do, mad genius that you are. But Sherlock, I couldn’t let that prick, that—”

“I know that too, but forget him, John. Forget him.” He kisses the damp shoulder under his mouth. “This is ours. However we got here, this is ours. _”_

And it is, it is _theirs,_ and Sherlock doesn’t feel calm, he feels utterly, recklessly joyful. John is _his_ , and is handing this to _him,_ to Sherlock, alone in all the world. 

Burying his nose in John’s hair, he wraps his left arm more firmly around John’s chest, deepening his thrusts at the same time. He reaches around with his right arm as well, so that the whole weight of his torso lies across John’s broad back, and John is supporting them both with his knees and his grip on the headboard. 

They rock together. Sherlock rounds his spine, chasing depth, and John presses his hips back, straining closer with every heave of their bodies. If he pulls John close enough perhaps they will absorb each other, perhaps they will fuse, flesh and gristle, and finally be wholly given to one another. Surely, if they have the courage for this, that final crackling meld must be almost an afterthought.

Because this, _this_ is where the greater bravery lies for John: Not in taking a rough touch and a hard, ramming cock—John is numb to ungentleness, he has seen so much of it—but in accepting a reverent hand, an ardent desire, and words that force him to see his own value.

When Sherlock finally wraps his hand around John’s erection, the two of them are moving in such perfect unison that Sherlock thinks for a moment he feels the warm pressure of his palm on his own cock. A second later he realises, dimly, that it must be John’s body he feels, tightening around him in response to the squeeze of his hand. He doesn’t need to move his hand, only to hold it still, as the movement of his hips pushes John’s cock deep into his fist.

He thrusts again. Again. He can feel his release building in his balls and belly and in the increasing tightness of the muscles inside John’s body. 

_Inside John’s body._ He is inside John’s body. John has let him in, has let him open him with gentleness, has let him see the fear and vulnerability he has been carrying so close for so long. Has exorcised his voices, perhaps, and given himself up into Sherlock’s hands and Sherlock’s care in the sure knowledge that he is safe there. 

Like a man. Like a man _may_ do, when his confidence in his lover is unshakeable and he has nothing left that he needs to hide. 

“John.” His words come on panting breaths. “John. This is—This—Thank you, oh god, thank you, thank—John. _John._ John.” His last _John_ is drawn out on a jagged moan. There is no kind of speech that can accompany his last frenzied thrusts, but he holds his fist in place as he drives into John and propels John’s cock deep into his waiting grip.

Despite the rising tide in Sherlock’s body as he grips and thrusts, John comes first, with a wracking growl on the crest of his climax. He collapses the next moment, releasing his grip on the headboard, and the arm across his chest takes his full weight. Sherlock releases John’s spent cock and wraps his right arm, too, around John’s slumped body, splaying his come-spattered fingers across John’s belly and hip.

And now John is weak from his orgasm and hanging in Sherlock’s arms, and in Sherlock’s burst of possession there is no more room for gentleness. He pulls them back to take some of their weight on his own thighs, and his body takes over completely; he bucks and ruts deep into John’s unresisting body. He is too far out of his own control to mitigate the yowl that bursts out in his own high, wild voice as he comes, hips convulsing erratically.

A moment later, the savage strength of Sherlock’s arms gives way, and he barely has time to guide them down to the bed before he yields to the languor suffusing his limbs. They settle, John’s body half on its side, still partly trapped beneath Sherlock’s weight. Sherlock buries his face in John’s hair and the back of his neck. John tucks Sherlock’s arm under his own, and they lie in silence. 

Their hearts beat, their chests rise and fall. For several long minutes, it is enough.

At length, John stirs, and takes a long breath. “Sherlock,” he says. His voice is croaky. “Thank you.”

_Don’t be absurd_ , Sherlock wants to say. But at least John hasn’t said, _I’m sorry,_ which would have been much, much worse, so Sherlock says, instead, “Of course.” And now, because he can never be sure when John has seen the obvious, he asks, “Do you see, though?”

“Mm?” From where he lies, Sherlock can see the crinkles of John’s smile. _He is teasing._ No longer angry. “Weren’t we just passing the time?” 

Sherlock smiles too, into the skin of John’s shoulder, but refuses to concede. “Well, yes. And proving a point.”

John twists around, peers at him, still smiling. “What point?” 

“What point?” Sherlock raises himself up, draws his head back, gives John _the look_. “That John Watson does not need some idiot down the pub to tell him what it means to be a man.”

“No.” John turns, now, wriggles around in Sherlock’s arms to face him. “But apparently I do need Sherlock Holmes to show me.” He smiles, sleepy and brilliant and radiant with love. 

(Like a man.)

**Author's Note:**

> Sex acts have exactly the meaning we imbue them with. This is not a story about what I think bottoming means, but about John working out what _he_ thinks it means.


End file.
